Page 54 of The Second Chance Cinema
Shortly after, Melinda’s face took over the screen.
On their first real date, Drake and Melinda huddled up inside their town’s only Thai restaurant. Melinda ordered drunken noodles. She made a joke about not getting the noodles too drunk. “I’ll have the same,” Drake added, and then they were alone again.
“You look … great tonight, by the way,” he told her. His hands fidgeted on his lap under the table. He wasn’t hiding his nerves well.
“Thanks. So do you.” Melinda tugged on the pink-and-whitegingham fabric that reminded Drake of a chessboard. “This dress was in bad shape when I picked it up from the thrift store,” she said. “But I added some sleeves and cleaned her all up. Now she’s like new.”
The waitress dropped off some free spring rolls. Melinda reached out to grab one. “Nice of them to bring these,” she said, dunking the top into a fragrant peanut sauce. “They must know they’ve got a customer for life in me.”
Her words unsettled Drake; they reminded him that he hadn’t thought through the logistics of them being together. Sure, their town was a nice place to visit on holidays, but unlike Melinda, he didn’t want to stay there. Since living at home after college, he’d felt stuck, held back, limited in every way. Drake dreamed of big-city skylines. He wanted to be surrounded by one-of-a-kind homes and people. Everything was the same here. The same as what he’d always known. “A customer for life, huh?” Drake tried to ask casually.
“Oh, yeah,” Melinda said. “Why go anywhere else when you’ve found a good thing?”
Drake wanted to take Melinda somewhere more grown-up for a second date. He’d picked up an extra shift at Peat’s Hardware to make sure he could cover the bill at Lake Lounge. Out the window, boats glided over the surface of a small, dark marina. The restaurant was romantic at first glance, but as he took in the expensive wine list and stiff white tablecloths, he feared he’d made a mistake.
“I’m sorry if this place is a little stuffy,” Drake said. They had just learned from the waiter that their dinner didnotcome with a free appetizer or even free bread. His stomach protested.
“This place is nice,” Melinda told him. The corners of her lips turned into a smile. “Although, it would make things moreinteresting if you kissed me.” She set the menu up in front of them, and Drake kissed her then. His heart was beating so fast that it became a cartoon heart he worried she might see. It jutted right there out of his sweater, like he was an illustrated animal responding to the swell of keys and strings.
The third date was more intimate. Melinda had invited Drake to her home, which was an apartment above the shop. He jumped a little as she slammed a knife into a wooden cutting board, chopping up ingredients for homemade sushi. She was tired of going to restaurants, she told him, especially ones that didn’t come with bread. Bread was a staple of the human experience. If it wasn’t provided freely, the restaurant wasn’t for them. Drake watched her float around the balmy tiled kitchen as she rolled salmon and avocado into sticky rice.
“This dinner was a mistake,” she said after trying a bite. The sushi looked irritated, but Drake told her it was delicious. She served it on her table lined with two taper candles tucked inside antique gold mice.
This apartment always felt like an attic to him; the lines of the roof moved into an A-frame shape, and patterned rugs rested on floors that were nearly covered by the bed in the center of the room. “Never compromise on a bed,” Melinda had insisted when she gave him a quick tour. “Get your shoe budget under control and buy yourself a nice bed.”
Drake woke up in her nice bed that week and the following one. When they weren’t in bed, they sat at the terrible tiny couch that faced her wood-burning fireplace. Melinda met Drake’s parents at the Edison building and stayed for dominoes. They went to Nathan’s Diner for grilled cheese sandwiches and ate candy that hurt their teeth from the gumball machine. They shared lime kisses inside Drake’s parked car.
Eventually, an invitation broke their small-town routine. Melinda asked Drake if he wanted to join her at a friend’s baby shower in the city. The friend had a modest, but airy, apartment with a second bedroom where her baby would sleep. She mentioned an Italian restaurant that she and her husband frequented in the area. Drake suggested they stop by on the way home. Their menus arrived, and before the waitress could give them time to think their choice over, Melinda asked if the meal came with bread.
“Of course, it does,” the waitress said. “Although, I do have to recommend you order the garlic bread, too. It’s kind of what we’re known for.”
“Makes sense,” they agreed in unison.
“I’m really happy, Drake,” Melinda told him. How long had it been since they started dating. A month? Two?
“About the double bread?” Drake asked.
“With you,” she said. “I’m really happy with you.”
“I love you, Melinda.”
The statement was true at the time. Drake did love her. Drake loved her in that insatiable, first-love way—the kind that resulted in late-night talks on the phone about nothing in the hours they weren’t together, winding the cord around his wrist as he heard her voice. He had loved her since that night at the school dance, he believed. It was an easy love, though, a love without challenge or growth. A love of sameness, much like the town itself. But at the time, at that moment, it was just love, and it was the only romantic kind Drake had known.
“I love you, too,” she said.
The bread arrived. They kissed, and the red lights cast over them from a blinking sign in the window that spelled out the name of the restaurant:THE GARLIC BREAD PLACE.
24
The house had been quiet since Saturday’s screening. Too quiet, Drake felt. For the last three mornings, Ellie’s office door was already closed when he got up. He couldn’t blame her for throwing herself into her work. It was probably a nice distraction from everything. Right after seeing Ben’s death, she’d watched Melinda and Drake fall in love.
And he’d declared that love for the first time at The Garlic Bread Place.
Drake hadn’t been trying to repeat his own history by bringing Ellie there. His excuse was much more innocent: The Garlic Bread Place seemed like the kind of under-the-radar restaurant she would love. He had wanted to impress her with amazing food. Drake had tried to explain his rationale as they left the cinema that night, but Ellie darted outside, and the rules forced his silence. She was left with a story that lacked context.
This morning, something was different. The door to Ellie’s office was open, and her desk chair was empty. She wasn’t downstairs, either. In the kitchen, a couple sheets of paper waited for him on the table. They were still hot from the printer. Drake sucked in a deep breath. He knew, based on the title alone, what he was about to read.
The Place Where the Dresses Talk
